


Gratitude

by CaitlynRose



Category: A Star is Born (2018)
Genre: Everybody Lives, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 14:33:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18317207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaitlynRose/pseuds/CaitlynRose
Summary: Jackson thinks about his relationship with Ally.





	Gratitude

Reticence, by and large, was not a quality that Jackson Maine had encountered very much in other people over the previous fifteen or twenty years.

Quite the opposite, in fact. In any given room, people typically made a beeline for him. They typically wanted to tell him _all about_ themselves.

This came, at times, from a very pure place. People familiar with his music felt they knew him already, somehow - felt prepared, just at the mere sight of him, to trust him with their hopes and fears and everything in between. Other times, of course, people’s motivations were distinctly less pure. They would come into a conversation with him primed and ready, armed with some personal or professional design that had them all too keen to manufacture some sense of closeness, and fast.

One thing was for damn sure. On the very, very rare occasion on which Jackson Maine had asked a woman (or, for that matter, a man) out for a drink in the past, he didn’t think it was too big-headed to acknowledge the honest truth, which was that such an invitation had, generally speaking, been fucking jumped at.

From the get-go, Ally was different.

She wasn’t spiky with him, exactly - on the contrary, she was funny, and polite, and cooler about the whole fame thing than anyone he’d met in a long time.

But, still, there was a guardedness to her that Jackson just didn’t tend to experience in very many people.

She was blunt, and she rolled her eyes, and she didn’t seem to want to talk about herself much. At least five moments in which the average singer would have been grabbing the chance to ask for a support slot on his tour came and went. She got salty with a cashier, and she _punched a cop in the face_ , and at every turn, it had seemed to Jack that she could see through him like he was goddamn made of glass.

That, not 48 hours later, this woman would end up having breakfast beside him in a bathrobe - everything about her more impossibly soft and open than he’d ever seen another person - felt sort of like a miracle to Jack. It had sort of taken his breath away.

“I don’t feel this way about everybody,” she said to him quietly, the day they left her father’s house.

And then three days after that, they’re in a hotel room in Denver, the both of them sitting upright in bed as day breaks outside. She’s on his lap with her arms and legs looped around him. And he’s _inside of her_.

Somehow, Jackson feels more powerfully struck by that basic fact that he has ever been during any similar experience in his past.

The thing, he guesses, is that he actually hasn’t ever really _had_ an experience that was similar in anything beyond the broadest possible sense. This is not sex like he has ever known it before Ally, or actually has ever even considered that it could be. This is broad daylight, eyes fixed on one another, stone cold sober sex. And as it turns out, it feels maybe one part terrifying, and nine parts fucking incredible.

Ally’s barely moving, just rocking her hips gently as her breath comes out in long, even exhales. Every so often her eyelids flutter shut, her open mouth widening wordlessly. It’s the most gorgeous thing Jack’s ever seen. She doesn’t seem to be in any hurry, and he finds he’s not inclined to rush her. The journey, so to speak, suddenly seems to be more important than the destination.

“I don’t know what’s happening to me with you,” she murmurs at some point - he has no idea when. Her eyes widen, and she actually looks a little alarmed, and it’s in moments like this, Jack thinks to himself, that he can glimpse again the girl he very first met.

Things between them have galloped along at such a pace that, even such a short time later, it’s sort of easy to forget that earliest version of her. It’s easy to dismiss as a temporary defensive mechanism the eggshell veneer she’d had around her like a second skin in the dressing room of the Bleu Bleu, and in that godawful cop bar.

But, no. That’s not it at all.

What she helps him understand - what she tells him slowly, over days and weeks, sometimes with words and sometimes not - is that the girl he’d met was the girl she’d really and truly been. She’d been cynical and afraid and so, so _tired_ ; she’d been those things for _years_.

And now, somehow, she isn’t anymore.

Jack thinks that if _he_ did that - if it can really be true, like she says, that he did that - it might well be the best thing he’s ever done in his life.

**\--------**

Ally is allocated a bunk on the bus, and she announces to him her intention to sleep in it.

She wants the other guys in the band to like her, she says - she wants to be just another part of the team. She might come and visit him sometimes. If he’s lucky.

Four nights and four visits later, everyone is getting back on the bus after a show when Ally walks right past her bunk and into what’s (generously) termed “the master suite” along with him. She calls goodnight to the guys and keeps hold of his hand the whole time, and casually - like it’s the most normal thing in the world - reaches for the buttons on his shirt the minute the door’s closed.

They don’t discuss the new setup, really.

Obviously, the speed at which her original plans are abandoned could, Jack thinks, be evidence of his own irresistibleness to her. And/ or, it could be that it really just doesn’t take Ally very long to realize that he was 100% correct when he’d assured her that nobody else on this bus would even notice where she slept, much less would they remotely give a shit.

Regardless, the upshot is that after that, they’re together every night, curled together in a mess of sheets as the bus makes its way through highway and desert and country back roads.

In the daytime, though, sometimes Ally still hangs out in her bunk to read or write. Sometimes, he crawls in there with her. It’s a tight space for one, never mind for two, especially when one of the two is over six feet tall.

“I don’t know why you come in here, it’s like a fuckin’ coffin,” he grumbles, just for the sake of it.

She’s unperturbed.

“It’s like a _cocoon_ ,” she corrects, reaching around him to pull the curtain closed.

In the coffin cocoon, they talk and laugh and kiss, and sometimes they write music, and Jack's never known the hours on a tour bus to pass so quickly. 

**\--------**

He never really liked "Too Far Gone."

Other people did - it was a pretty big hit, actually, top 10 on the Billboard charts for seven weeks - but something about it just never felt exactly right to him.

He re-records it with Ally. She makes it so much better because there isn’t actually anything, in Jack’s experience, that she cannot make better.

**\--------**

They have three days off between shows in Charlotte and Charleston, and they spend the weekend at a rented house on the North Carolina coast.

Jack can’t remember the last time he did something like this - actually saw a little of the place he was in. He can’t remember that last time he’d had any particular reason to look forward to a tour break.

The house has a pool, and the first morning that they’re there, Jack swims thirty lengths in it. Despite, or maybe because of, growing up in the desert, he’s always liked the water.

As he walks up the steps to get out of the pool, he sees Ally on a lounger drinking coffee, gorgeous in sunglasses and some kind of floaty thing he wouldn’t know how to describe. She’s watching him. Perhaps - he realizes now - she’s _been_ watching him.

“Jesus,” she mutters, shaking her head a little as if in disbelief. She’s talking to herself, but somehow or other, he hears her.

“What?” he asks, confused. He reaches for a towel and starts to dry himself off as she regards him, an odd expression on her face.

“I swear to god, you really don’t have any idea, do you?”

On this occasion, Jack would have no problem admitting that she’s entirely correct. He _doesn’t_ have any idea what she’s talking about, though she doesn’t sound mad, which can only be a plus.

“Well let me put it you you this way, honey,” she says - that’s a new thing, he’s noticed, that she’s started calling him lately. “You know all those women screaming in the front row at every show? I don’t think it’s just your song lyrics they’re gaga for.”

Oh! Jack gets what she’s saying now - or at least he thinks he does. A grin seems to rise to his lips at the realization, but - in jest - he tries to fix an affronted expression on his face.

Ally just smiles, rolling her eyes. “I mean, obviously your song lyrics are great,” she adds then, as though she’s really trying to appease him. “ _Spectacular_. But, you know. I’m just sayin’. Getting out of that pool…” she raises one eyebrow wryly. “You have to know you’re like a fucking cologne commercial, right?”

He laughs out loud at that, shaking his head a little bashfully as he hunkers down on the sun lounger that’s beside hers.

She giggles too, but nods wordlessly. An _it’s true_.

“C’mere” she says then, quietly, cocking her head a little, and he doesn’t have to be asked twice. He shifts to hover beside her, leaning in to kiss her lips over and over, one hand clasped to her cheek.

Soon, her hands on his shoulders tug at him, and he knows enough at this point to know that that means she wants him closer to her, on top of her.

“I’m gonna get you all wet,” he warns, though it’s pretty half-hearted even to his own ears.

And Ally’s big hazel eyes look up at him, hold his gaze for a second before she leans right in to his ear.

“When have I complained about that?”

**\--------**

He drinks less than he used to, but still so much more than he should.

That’s the only thing they don’t talk about. 

**\--------**

In the midst of what was supposed to be a casual celebratory dinner but has now snowballed into what can really only be described as a wedding reception, they get ten minutes alone in some random back room.

Ally’s flushed from dancing and Jack can’t discount the possibility that he might be too.

The music outside is still audible, together with the whoops and hollers of friends and strangers, and somehow that only makes the little bit of relative quiet they have in here feel even more precious. Like it’s a thing they’ve managed to steal in plain sight. There’s a tinny ringing sound in Jack’s ears, but for tonight at least, he’s determined not to pay any mind to it.

Ally’s cheek is pressed against his shirt, her arms looped around his torso, and she squints up at him.

“Do you feel different?” she asks quietly.

Jack considers it for a minute.

“Not really,” he replies honestly.

Ally just smiles softly.

“Me neither.”

And instinctively, he knows then that she understood what he was trying to say; that is, that he’s been in this thing for keeps all the way along anyway.

“I like “husband,” though,” she muses, a second later. “ _This is my husband Jackson. My husband’s waiting for me_ …yeah,” she says decisively, as though she’s tried the term on for size. “I like that.”

Jack likes it too. He never - like, really never ever - thought he’d be anybody’s husband, but now, he finds could listen to her say that word on a loop.

He had liked boyfriend and girlfriend as well, for a while - can still remember feeling a thrill that probably bordered on the uncool at the sound of those words. But it wasn’t long - it was, in fact, a shockingly short amount of time - before they started to feel…not right, somehow. Not enough. Like they were just too weak to carry the weight of him and her.

“We can do this again, if you want,” he says then. “Have the whole thing, all your family, whatever you want.”

He frowns, a sliver of doubt creeping in. “Do you wish we’d done it different? Like, planned it more?”

Ally just shakes her head, letting it nudge his chest.

“Nope,” she says simply, and they stand there like that, just being with each other, for another while.

“You wanna go back out?” Ally asks eventually, pulling back a little so she can look at him without craning her neck. “I have sort of a surprise for you, if you want.”

Jack raises his eyebrows, surprised even at the mention of a surprise. “What is it?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she says cheekily, and then, with a roll of her eyes that suggests there’s little point even trying to keep the secret: “It’s a song. Obviously.”

And it’s true that songs are their most common gifts to one another. It’s true that his wife - god he fuckin’ loves that, _his wife_ \- is crazy talented, and man is she prolific. But this has been a pretty packed day. Cranking out a song in the middle of it all seems remarkably impressive, even by her standards. “You wrote a song today?” he asks incredulously.

“No, I…uh. I’ve kinda had this one in my back pocket for a while,” Ally admits. “Or, most of it, at least.”

He smiles gently, reaching out to smooth his hand over her hair.

“You hiding love songs?”

Ally doesn’t answer, just takes him by the hand and leads him back outside, settling herself at the piano and looking right at him all the while.

“Is That Alright“ will never be released. A few people record it on their phones as she sings it in public, just this one time, and fans and record executives alike plead with Ally to do a version in the studio, but she never does. That one, she tells everyone who asks, was _just for Jackson_.

**\--------**

He can’t believe, sometimes, how tender she is with him.

No-one has ever been like this with him in his whole life.

Fuck knew his dad didn’t spend a whole lot of time listening to him, much less bandaging scraped knees or dispensing hugs any of that shit. Nor did Bobby.

Jack knew his brother cared abut him - and he knew the guys in his band cared about him too. But when it came to actually showing it….well. Maybe it was sexist to say, he didn’t know, but it has always seemed to Jack like women were just better at that. And he never had a mother, or a grandmother, or a sister.

He’d never been in love with anyone before Ally, either. That was the truth.

It's not even a truth that has become clear to him only with the benefit of hindsight - knowing what he knows now, and all that. No. In every other relationship he’d ever had with a woman, Jackson had been sure - even as the thing was taking its course - that it was not love, would not last.

He’s almost certain that no other woman has ever been in love with him, either. Sure, they’d hung off of him, and called him baby. But it was nothing like now. It was absolutely nothing like Ally’s fingertips on his chin - _what were you like in school?_ Her thumb tracing the shell of his ear - _are you in pain? You can tell me_. Her nose pressed against his - _I missed you so muc_ h.

Even when he’s looking at the floor - embarrassed or melancholy - she ducks her head down to catch his eyes, and a blind man could see the love, the gentleness, that’s just waiting for him.

Ally treats him like he is precious, and perversely, sometimes it’s almost painful, to see that faith in her. Because of course he knows that he is not precious, not really. He’s a piece of shit. And he doesn’t deserve her.

**\--------**

Things happen - a series of awful things that Jack hates to remember but can’t forget, sometimes not even for so much as an hour.

He’s hurt her so much - even if she’s more forgiving than any other person on this earth would have been, he knows that’s the truth. And the thing is, knowing himself as he does, he really cannot say with anything approaching certainty that he won’t do it again. The more likely prospect, in fact, seems to be that he _will_ hurt her again.

That prospect is completely _unbearable_ to him.

Eventually, he just cannot live with it any longer.

**\--------**

He wakes up attached to all kinds of contraptions, and some medical-sounding thing beeping steadily.

The first thing he notices is the streak of white light coming in through the window, almost painful to his half-opened eyes. The second thing is the dead weight against his thigh, and somehow before he even sees her he knows that it is Ally. With no small amount of effort, he manages to lifts his hand to her hair, and he hadn’t wanted to wake her but she jolts up immediately like she’s been shot.

“Jack?” she says urgently, reflexively, her eyes darting around the room in tired confusion until she lands on him. “Oh my god, Jack!”

There’s a flurry of activity then - Ally standing up, nurses and doctors coming in, all sorts of things being said, adjustments being made to the machines. It all passes in a blur, and it’s not until he’s alone again with Ally - her on a chair beside his bed, clasping one of his hands between both of hers - that Jackson feels like his brain starts to engage even a little bit.

“How long was I, uhh… what happened?” he says, and his voice comes out sounding strange.

“Bobby found you. Called 911. You’ve been out for a couple days,” Ally says, and her voice doesn’t sound quite normal either.

Days? Shit. Jack doesn’t need to ask to know that Ally’s been here all that time. Not to mention the fact that in his experience, it doesn’t typically take days for some receptionist at any given hospital to call TMZ. It takes hours. Sometimes minutes.

“Is it a circus out there?” he asks.

“It’s alright,” she replies, but the way she says it tells him that the chances are high it’s a circus out there.

“A ton of fans have been by,” she adds then. “They can’t get inside obviously but you should see all the things they’ve left. Letters and all kinds of stuff. It’s…pretty incredible, actually.”

Jack knows that it might well be, but heartless as it would sound to say aloud, he just can’t bring himself to care.

“I’m sure everyone at the record label’s havin’ a fit,” he says, because for some reason that’s what pops into his head. Again, though, it’s not a fact that means anything to him whatsoever.

“Yeah well. They can all go and fuckin’ jump in a lake,” Ally mutters sourly.

Despite himself, Jack manages to bark out a laugh at that. Somehow, it takes right back to the unblinking expression on her face, the tightness in her voice when she told the cashier that very first night: it’s not _really_ alright.

If you asked Jackson, she’d started to think a few too many things _were_ alright these days, especially where Interscope Records were concerned. So, it’s good to see this spirit in her again, even if it’s in his defence rather than her own.

Suddenly, in the silence, Ally lets out - well, Jack wouldn’t even know what to call it. A wail or a sob or a scream or some combination, tears starting to stream down her cheeks, her face contorted. He’s never seen or heard anguish like it in his life.

How he feels - that’s how she sounds. That’s how she looks.

“God, Jack, why’d you do it?” she implores, like she’s just got to ask him, even if only this one time. “How could you want to leave me? How could you leave me here by myself?”

Jack feels something twist inside of him, like a rusted nail, and he’d swear the sharp, searing pain is a physical one.

“You’d be better off without me,” he croaks out, and he knows that sounds like such a cliched thing to say. Having turned over all the evidence relentlessly in his mind, though, he’s completely convinced that it’s accurate in this case. “You would,” he continues, his voice a little stronger now. “I know you don’t think so, but that’s only because you love me. That doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

Ally’s eyes are wide and watery, and she’s shaking her head and little, like she doesn’t even know where to start with what he’s just said to her.

“ _How_ can you say that,” she says - it’s not even really a question. Her voice is barely more than a whisper, and she sounds so completely dejected now. So despairing.

“I’m no good, Al. I don’t know why but I’m just…a fucked up person. That’s just it. I was fucked up before you met me, and now I’m halfway to fucking up your life too, and I can’t do it okay?” Tears leak from his eyes. “You’re too special. I fuckin' love you too much.”

She doesn’t say anything to that, just raises his hand to her mouth and holds it against her lips, fat tears rolling down her face that she doesn’t even seem to notice.

For a long time, silence.

“Jack,” she says then, and her voice is quiet, still, but it sounds steadier now somehow. Her tears have dried. “To lose you… I wouldn’t recover. Okay? Do you understand me? I don’t think I could survive it.”

She enunciates every word, and she looks right at him, and - terrifyingly - he can tell she’s dead serious.

**\--------**

He gets sober for Ally.

Because all he wants in the world is for her to have what _she_ wants, and what she wants - inexplicably but very clearly - seems to be him.

He knows this isn’t what you’re supposed to say. You’re not supposed to be doing it for anyone else - that’s what they tell you in AA, over and over. If the whole godforsaken process is going to have any hope of actually working, you have to do it for yourself.

And the thing is, when Jack thinks of what it is to live his life - with her - and what it is to really feel his feelings - with her - somehow those do seem like things that, even when they’re hard (or really fucking hard) he wants to learn how to keep doing.

So, in a manner of speaking, he guesses maybe he _does_ do it for himself, in the end. Or, you could put it that way. So far as he’s concerned, it’s all semantics.

The thing that feels the most true to him is that after probably twenty years of not trying whatsoever, five years of sort of trying, and one year of trying hard and failing, the thing that finally gets him sober and keeps him that way is Ally Maine.

He does it for her.

**\--------**

Cutting out booze and cigarettes, meditating, exercising, getting more sleep… turns out that all these things - the same ones that have been written on every single pamphlet he’s ever been handed - actually do help with the tinnitus.

(Truthfully, he doesn’t quite have the cigarettes completely licked yet, but he’s gotten down to just a few sneaky ones a week, which sort of seems fine to him. And in all other regards, he’s more or less much become the model patient. It’s pretty nice, he finds, to go to his doctors and not have to lie through his teeth about what he’s been up to).

After a while, though, it becomes clear that even his best efforts can only make so much improvement. Hearing aids - not just for the stage, but for day to day life - are mentioned, and somehow, after all these years of vehement resistance, Jack finds himself agreeing to the idea.

He’s seen photos of the ones he’s getting - they’re small, and about as close to invisible as money can buy, and they don’t look anything like the thick, beige, plastic things that he can hardly think of in association with anyone other than the very elderly. Still, though. _Hearing aids._ Sitting on the couch the night before his appointment at ENT, Jack’s starting to have second and third thoughts about the whole thing.

Ally comes skipping down the stairs in pyjama shorts and a string vest, hair pulled up haphazardly into a ponytail, and she looks so much younger than her 33 years, he thinks. Right now, he feels older than his 42.

“You want tea?” she calls over to him.

“No thanks,” he replies, and all is quiet between them until she comes to plop down beside him on the couch, a mug of steaming hot liquid in her hands.

“Alright. Episode four?” she asks expectantly.

The expression on his face must betray him before he has a chance to alter it, because seconds later, she’s frowning a little. “What’s up?”

“Nothing, I just….whatever, nothing.”

“What is it?” she prods again, with a little laugh.

Jack sighs in frustration, not knowing how to express what’s on his mind. “I just… this is so stupid,” he says. “You shouldn’t be in here watching fuckin’ _box sets_ , Ally.”

She’s taken aback, and she doesn't try to hide it. “And what exactly do you think I should be doing?” 

“I don’t know! But, like, _something_ , you know? Not just sitting around.”

“Oh. Well, keep me updated,” she says tersely. “I mean, I work as hard as you all day long and some days - let’s be honest - _harder_. But hey, sure - if you can think of any more _suitable_ activities for me, you go right ahead and tell me, Jackson.”

And suddenly, Jack can see how wrong this has all gone somehow. He scrambles to retrieve the situation.

“What? No!” he tries again. “That’s not what I meant, I just mean you should be out having fun or something is all.”

He gestures towards her. “I mean, look at you. You’re young and you’re gorgeous and you’re a fuckin’ superstar, Al. Any night of the week, you could have your pick of any place in West Hollywood - you show up and I'm telling you, they wouldn’t be able to believe their luck.”

The expression on Ally’s face seems to transform before his very eyes from wholeheartedly pissed to wholeheartedly perplexed.

“ _What_?” she replies, looking down pointedly at her tea, at her attire. “Do you think I want to be in some club right now? Or, really, like, _ever_?”

She studies him, the wheels seeming to turn in her brain. Then, after a beat:

“Is this about tomorrow? Are you freaking out about the hearing aids?”

“I’m not freaking out, I just…whatever,” Jack mutters. “You shouldn’t even have to have this conversation. You’re married to a fuckin’ old man.”

Ally frowns. “Uhh, I’m sorry, maybe I’m the one who can’t hear. Did you say I’m married to a rock star? Because, _yeah_ , I am, and it’s fuckin’ awesome.”

He can’t help but smile a little at that, rolling his eyes, and she smiles too. She leans in to kiss him, both hands on his face, and when she pulls away, she nudges her nose against his for a second.

“Alright Jack, let me just tell you how this is gonna go,” she says then - no nonsense. “We’re gonna watch two more episodes of this, and then we’re gonna go upstairs and probably have sex and then go to sleep. And then tomorrow, we’re gonna go and get you some brand new ears, and everything is gonna be exactly the same as it is now except for better. Okay?”

She’s so businesslike that Jack can do nothing but laugh.

“Okay,” he finds himself agreeing, and in truth, he does feel cheered somehow. She just has that effect on him.

“Alright.”

Ally presses play on the remote control, and turns towards the TV. Out of the corner of his eye, Jack can see her shake her head a little in disbelief.

“Like I want to drive to fucking West Hollywood,” she mumbles to herself as the opening credits roll. “Jesus.”

**\--------**

One time, Ally was reversing into a parking spot and he told her to be careful on her passenger side; she said she was fine and then she drove his Jeep right into a concrete pillar.

Another time, she’d all but insisted that he allow a Thai woman named Lawana to massage him, in what Jack honestly could say was one of the worst and least relaxing experiences of his entire life.

The point being, Ally isn’t always right. But, he’d be the first to acknowledge that most of the time, she really _is._

When she says that they should make a record and just put it on the internet - that they should tour small venues, places they actually want to play - that people would love it, she’s fucking dead on the money.

**\--------**

One year sober felt good, but somehow two feels more than twice as good.

There have been up days and down days - but, as Ally always reminds him, that’s just life. That’s literally everybody’s life, hers included.

Slowly, though, through it all, he’s managed to build his sobriety into something that it feels like they both can trust.

“What do you want to do to celebrate?” Ally asks him when they wake up on the morning of the anniversary, light streaming in through the curtains in their bedroom.

He pulls her into him. “You.”

“Well that’s not very exciting,” she replies sensibly. “You can do me anytime.” (She’s smiling, though. She’s running her foot up his shin).

“I think it’s pretty exciting,” he says, nuzzling against her, and it’s true. Familiarity hasn’t had the cooling effect that he might once, in the life before he met her, have predicted it would; far from it, actually.

Sometimes, Ally does special things. Candles, or new underwear, or a series of texts throughout an afternoon, and Jack wouldn’t want in any way to understate how much he loves all those things. But the truth is, he doesn’t need them. What does it for him, really, is just Ally. Her body and her sensuality, her openness and her own desire.

This morning, she’s already naked under the sheets, and he can feel himself hardening at the feel of her bare skin against his. He kisses her, hard, and she responds in kind, sucking in a breath through her nose.

Her nipple stiffens in seconds when he takes the weight of her breast in his hand, rolling his palm against her, and suddenly he doesn’t want to wait. He encourages her onto her back and, both hands reaching down, he lines her hips up with his. She’s slick and ready for him - the pleasing side benefit of the fun they'd had before they fell asleep - and in one fluid motion, he pushes inside of her.

“Fucking _fuck_ ,” Ally gasps. She clenches around him like a velvet vice, and Jack smiles. His thoughts exactly.

He starts to move, and space and time blur in the exquisite way they always seem to, until -

“Hey Jack?” she murmurs. “I have to tell you something, okay?”

He halts. “Right now?”

Ally seems to consider it. “I guess not _right_ now.”

And honestly, Jack’s just not in a place where he can think much more about the matter. He _doesn’t_ think much more about it until he’s come, and he’s made his wife come, and they’re lying spent and sweaty, his head nestled in the soft space between her breasts.

“So you wanna hear something cool?” she murmurs then, bringing a hand up to trail her fingers through his hair.

Jack mumbles his assent and with his head where it is, he’s sure he can literally feel the hitch in her breath before she tells him:

“I’m pregnant.” 

**\--------**

Ally’s on top of the comforter, a mountain of pillows behind her to prop her up, and Jackson comes into to sit beside her.

“Hey,” he says softly, and looks down towards their daughter nursing. It’s only been three weeks, but already, the sight has become a familiar one. What had seemed to both he and Ally like a crazy thing to even imagine now seems like the most natural thing in the world.

“Reckon she’s almost done?” he asks softly.

“I think so.”

“You want me to run you a bath?”

“Oh my god,” Ally closes her eyes, like even the thought of it is a luxury she hadn’t dared imagine. “Fucking _yes_.”

“Alright. I’ll go start it in a minute,” Jack says, because he’s distracted by Caroline. He strokes her little foot, watching her chest rise and fall as she nurses peacefully. He cannot get over how tiny and beautiful and perfect she is - and that’s objectively speaking; he’s never been a person who subscribed to the notion that all babies are cute.

“When do you think we have to stop swearing around her?” Ally asks then, and Jack doesn’t have a chance to respond before his wife adds: “Obviously once she starts to talk. But probably a little bit before that too, right? Like when she starts to internalize words and whatever.”

“Probably. I’m pretty sure that’s, like, all the time though,” Jack says. “I’m pretty sure that’s now.”

Ally just pulls a face, leaning into the comedy that - they’re rapidly discovering - seems to come for free with parenthood. “Well, shit!”

**\--------**

He’s in the den, staring at the TV but not really watching it when she pads in behind him. She puts her hands on his shoulders, squeezing them a little.

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly. “You were nice and I was mean. Forgive me?”

And somehow at her words - the simplicity of them - all the irritation he’s been holding onto for the last half hour seems to leave him like air from a balloon.

He turns his head to look at her.

“C’mere,” he says, and she comes around to sit on his lap.

“I’m sorry too,” he tells her, as his body shifts easily to accommodate hers. He can’t even remember what they fought about. (Well, he can - but the point is that he doesn’t want to anymore).

Ally just shakes her head, as if to say he doesn’t need to apologise. She leans in to put her forehead against his temple for a second. “I love you, Jackson Maine.”

He raises an eyebrow jokingly, when she pulls away, trying to lighten the mood. “Full name, huh?”

She just smiles softly in response. “My Arizona boy.”

He smiles then too. It’s not always totally smooth sailing, trying to be artists together, and businesspeople together, and parents together. Sometimes, it’s good to remember that in the beginning, before they were anything else, they were just two people in a parking lot who didn’t want the night to end.

**\--------**

Ally’s sitting at her vanity mirror, peering in at herself.

“You know Riley?” she says to him absently, when she hears him come in. “Apparently she got Botox, and I swear to God you wouldn’t know. It doesn’t look, like, weird, you know? It looks good.”

Jackson, if he were being entirely honest, isn’t completely sure who Riley is. She’s a blonde woman from Ally’s PR firm, that much he knows at least, but the difficulty is that there seem to be three such women there - all of whom seem very pleasant and competent, and whom he’s secretly always struggled to tell apart. Certainly he’s never paid any heed whatsoever to their wrinkles, or lack thereof.

“You thinkin’ about getting Botox?” he asks then, and he consciously keeps his voice neutral, like he’s just enquiring about the weather.

Needless to say, there’s not one single bit of him that wants his wife to go out and buy one of those fucking weird smooth foreheads. The very suggestion reminds uncomfortably him of the Rez Gambler days - now thankfully a dim and distant memory. But, what Jack’s come to understand in the years since then is that as much as it was never fucking Rez’s or anybody else’s place to tell Ally that she should change her body, it’s not really his to say that she _shouldn’t_ either, if she wants to.

To his absolute relief, though, Ally shakes her head.

“Nah. The idea of, like, having shit injected into my face…” she grimaces. “I mean it’d be nice not to have these,” she adds, peering in at herself in the mirror again, using her fingertips to smooth out two fine frown lines between her eyebrows. “But hey.”

She shrugs, like, _what are you gonna do_? and Jackson is completely, silently, thrilled.

**\--------**

He can still remember everything about the night they first sang together, in northern California. It was one of the best nights of his entire life.

He remembers how, at the end of "Shallow," Ally clung to him like she had no other anchor in the world, and even as she laughed excitedly, he could feel her whole body shaking.

These days, she isn’t shaking on stage.

But she still turns to him that exact same way at the end of every show and puts her arms around him, and still - every time - all he can think is how proud he is of her.

**\--------**

Jack’s pretty sure they’ve done a ton of stuff wrong with Caroline.

They’d each put her diaper on backwards a time or two when she was tiny, and they’d fed her out of jars when they were in a rush, and more than once - when they’d gotten back home late at night - they’d woken her out of her sleep just because they wanted to see her.

Now that’s she’s bigger and toddling around, it seems quite possible that she watches more Peppa Pig than is strictly advisable. Once, she fell off the slide in the backyard and cut her knee because he and Ally were too busy making out, of all things, to catch her in time.

Despite all of that, though, Carrie is the smiliest, kindest, smartest little girl. She really is. And - though of course she can’t articulate it yet - Jack feels pretty sure that she goes to bed every single night feeling like she’s safe and she’s loved. That’s not a gift that all kids get, as he knows all too well, and he’s so glad that he and Ally are able to give it to their daughter.

The idea of adding to the mix starts to feel not entirely crazy.

“I mean, hey,” Ally says, when they’re talking it over, “at least we know we can keep one alive now.”

**\--------**

Here’s what Jack knows: pregnancy, and giving birth, and everything that comes after that….it’s not for sissies. And Ally’s done it twice now. Connor Maine is 10 weeks old.

(Charlie and Caroline and Connor. Three Cs.

Jack had been a little reluctant about the name for that very reason, actually. “What if we have another one, though?” he’d worried aloud. “Does that mean we have to come up with something else beginning with C?”

This was absolutely no issue so far as Ally was concerned since, as she’d informed him then, they definitely wouldn’t be having another one. And, having just watched his wife endure a 9-hour labor like a fucking _hero_ , Jack wasn’t inclined to see that particular matter as anything other than 100% her call. Connor it was.)

He’s waited for her to let him know when she's ready, and tonight, in a blessed moment of domestic calm, she’d led his hand between her legs and he’d touched her until she was coming quietly against his fingers, a strangled cry escaping her lips.

And Jesus, it’s the most amazing feeling to know that he can still please her so, can still have her wet and wanting. That he can do that - that he can do it, so far as he can see, just by indulging her and loving her and being desperately turned on by her - has always felt to him like some kind of magic.

She’s reaching for him now, and he’s so hard it’s almost painful, and it has been a _long_ time. He can hardly get his boxers off fast enough. Right before the moment, though - right before _the_ moment - he finds himself stopping.

“I don’t wanna hurt you,” he says worriedly.

“You won’t.”

He hesitates, and his wife does too because the truth is, they neither of them really know exactly how this is going to go. Of course, they’ve been here once before, after Caroline, so it’s not quite the brand new terrain it was then, but still.

“I think we just gotta get it done,” Ally says pragmatically. “Like, the other option is to never have sex again.”

“When you put it that way…”

“Yeah. We have two kids now. It’s probably going to be a stressful twenty years or so. I think we at least need to be getting laid.”

He laughs at that, and Ally does too, and suddenly they’re laughing their heads off together. He drops to the side of her and she rolls to face him and still they’re smiling.

“Just go slow, okay?” she says then. “I think it’s gonna be good. We’re good at this, remember?”

He _does_ remember, and he’s about to tell her so when she speaks again.

“I mean, I know this isn’t my sexiest look ever or anything,” she says, joking but not, looking down a little self-consciously at the nursing bra she’s still wearing.

“ _Hey_ ,” Jack says, quick as a flash, because he can’t stand the idea of that kind of crap in her head, even for a second. “Stop.”

He leans in and, gently as he possibly can, presses a kiss to each of her breasts in turn. Then, grabbing her hand, he pulls it to his erection. “I want you so much,” he tells her, in case she didn’t get the message. “You’re all I want.”

Ally closes her fingers around his cock, and something tells Jackson this is going to go just fine. 

**\--------**

He thought he’d been quiet, but she stirs when he’s on his way out of the room. Jack’s never actually heard the sound of an animal dying, but he can’t imagine that the moan coming from Ally’s direction would be far off it.

“Jack?” she says, her voice muffled, “is that you?”

“Yeah,” he replies softly, “sorry, I’ll let you sleep.”

“It’s alright, I’m up, I’m up,” she groans, and as a matter of fact, she’s not at all up, but she does manage to haul herself to a seated position then, her back against the headboard. She puts both hand over her face as he comes to perch on the bed beside her.

“Jesus. I feel…” she pulls her hands away, looking at him for the first time, and shaking her head a little. “I can’t even describe to you how I feel.”

He cracks a smile. “That good, huh?”

Ally swallows a few times. “What time did I get home?”

“‘Bout three-ish maybe?”

“God. I’m never drinking again, Jack,” she says, with all the quintessential conviction of the hungover. “I’m serious. Let’s just go ahead and call this a 100% dry household now.”

Jack just laughs. Ally really isn’t a big drinker, especially since Carrie and Connor have come along. But approximately twice a year, she hits the tequila with Ramón, and Jack personally thinks it’s no bad thing for her to let loose every once in a while.

“Can you take the babies out?” she asks him then, weakly.

“Where to?”

“Just out of this house, I don’t care. I just can’t have any noise for, like…I don’t know. A while. As long as possible.”

“Sure.” He pulls her over towards him, kissing the top of her head. “I’ll take ‘em to see Bobby.” Then, gesturing towards the bedside cabinet as he gets up from the bed: “I left you some supplies.”

A glass of water, Tylenol, a Pedialyte sachet, and a plain bran muffin.

“I mean they probably won’t help you really,” he adds, in the interests of honesty. “But they’ll make you feel like you’re doing something, you know?”

She closes her eyes for a second. “You’re an angel, Jackson Maine.”

He’s halfway out the door now, and shakes his head. They both know she did the same, and so much more, for him back in the day.

“Just tryna even up the score a little bit,” he smiles.

**\--------**

Her dress is a dark leather the color of red wine - _oxblood_ , she’d told him - and it fits her like a second skin. There’s been a little bit more meat on her bones ever since the babies and he fucking loves it.

The partition in the limo is up, and he takes advantage of that fact, leaning over to kiss her bare shoulder.

“Do you think we could skip the red carpet?” he asks, his kisses creeping up her neck.

“What did you have in mind?” Ally asks, though the small smile playing on her lips as she tilts her head to allow him better access suggests she has a pretty good idea of what he has in mind.

“I don’t know. Someplace where there aren’t other people.”

“Bearing in mind we have to be on stage presenting in, like, 30 minutes…” she replies; a dose of reality.

“I could be really fast,” he says, grinning against her neck, and she bursts out laughing.

“Is that supposed to be an offer I can’t refuse?”

Jackson laughs too, kissing over her jaw and onwards until suddenly, his wife pulls away from him.

“Ah!” she exclaims, her voice a staccato warning. “You can’t kiss off my lipstick.”

Jack looks at her lips. They’re painted dark to match her dress, and though he’d be the first to admit that his knowledge of make-up is rudimentary at best, it does seem to him that whatever this stuff is, it’s making her perfect cupid’s bow seem somehow more perfect than ever. So, he makes no protest, just lets his head fall to kiss her throat instead, his hand squeezing her thigh.

When she lets out a little moan, he can feel it against his lips, and he swears, it almost undoes him.

And then suddenly, both Ally’s hands are on his cheeks, and she’s tugging his face upwards. “Actually, yeah you can,” she corrects herself, bringing his mouth to hers, kissing him deeply. “Whatever, fuck it.”

Ten minutes later and the car comes to a stop, an attendant opening the passenger door without warning. Ally’s just reaching over toward Jack with a Kleenex when some photographer swoops in, snapping a picture of him with burgundy still smeared all across his face.

Of course it’s all over the internet within twenty minutes - will be reprinted for years, in fact, anytime anyone writes an article about him and Ally. Their children will see it and cringe.

Jack doesn’t care one single bit.

**\--------**

As it turns out, they have to come up with another C name. Cadence arrives with blue eyes and a strong pair of lungs - a perfect surprise to complete the tribe - and Ally says that’s really it this time.

Jack still talks to his therapist once a week - still goes to meetings regularly. Even when they’re on the road, he gets a group together from among their band and crew and it’s oddly comforting, actually, to realize just how many of the people around him struggle with the same things he does.

Sometimes, he thinks about what he would have missed, if Bobby hadn’t found him in time - what Ally would have missed. He thinks about the music they’ve made, and the places they’ve travelled, and all the days and nights that they’ve wasted together in the most glorious possible ways. He thinks about the three beautiful, exhausting, precious children who wouldn’t even exist. He thinks about the future he _can’t wait_ to see unfold.

And he’s just grateful. That’s all.


End file.
